The makers of Fruity Pebbles, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, and other popular cereal brands are bitterly lobbying against a new Food and Drug Administration proposal that would prevent them from labeling their products as “healthy.”

The proposed FDA rule mandates that foods labeled as healthy must contain a major food group — such as dairy, fruits, or whole grains — and must fit certain limits on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

The rule limits cereals, for example, to no more than 2.5 grams of sugar per serving in order to be labeled as healthy — a restriction food manufacturers claim would exclude over 95 percent of ready-to-eat cereals on the market.

In response, processed food companies that produce a variety of snacks, baked goods, pastas, and frozen pizzas are challenging the rules before they are finalized by the agency. Among the most vocal food companies are producers of high-sugar cereals, which are largely marketed to children and have been criticized as a driver of the obesity epidemic in America.

In a joint filing made last month, the largest cereal producers in the country — General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Post Consumer Brands — decried the proposed nutritional criteria and threatened to file a lawsuit, challenging the guidelines as a violation of corporate free speech rights.

The rule, “if finalized in its present form,” the companies wrote, “would be open to legal challenge in that it violates the First Amendment by prohibiting truthful, non-misleading claims in an unjustified manner and also exceeds FDA’s statutory authority in several ways.”

The idea of a legal challenge may not be an idle threat.

The public comment docket includes a filing from the Washington Legal Foundation, a shadowy nonprofit that litigates esoteric and often controversial business interests. The group filed a letter in opposition in the form of a legal brief, laying out a broad case for a future court challenge against the FDA guidelines.

The organization contended that the healthy labeling requirements are an unconstitutional overreach of government power. Food companies, the Washington Legal Foundation argued, have “constitutionally protected commercial speech” rights covering their ability to use the term “healthy” to describe their added sugar products.

The FDA, the Washington Legal Foundation wrote in its brief, “cannot explain why consumers cannot make their own healthy decisions based on [nutrition labeling] data. Rather, it seeks to limit the food companies’ speech.”

The group does not disclose its donors and did not respond to a request for comment. In previous years, the Corn Refiners Association, a lobby group that represents the high fructose corn syrup industry, has disclosed financial ties to the Washington Legal Foundation.

Drug companies, including Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, have also used the Washington Legal Foundation to challenge government rules and establish legal precedent to reduce the ability for prosecutors to seek criminal charges for drug company executives.

Conagra, Ocean Spray, the American Frozen Food Institute, and the American Bakers Association similarly hinted at a legal threat to the FDA healthy food labeling rule. All four organizations cited constitutional issues with the proposed labeling requirements in letters to the agency.

The joint filing from cereal manufacturers not only scorns the labeling rules, but also argues that sugary cereals pose no health risks and are, in fact, beneficial to society and childhood health.

The companies stated that they view the “extremely strict” guidelines as “alarming” because “cereal is one of the most affordable, nutrient dense breakfast choices a person — adult or child — can make … with a wide range of options to suit different cultures, preferences, and taste.” Cereals, the companies claimed, are already recognized for “nutritional benefits,” given their inclusion in a range of federal programs that “serve the nation’s vulnerable populations,” such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and the National School Lunch Program.

The companies charged that cereal “delivers on nutrition when eaten alone, but when consumed as part of breakfast, it elevates the nutrition further,” with cereal eaters exhibiting an “overall higher diet quality.” As evidence, the filing cites a 2019 study conducted by in-house researchers employed by General Mills, the maker of Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Trix, among other brands.

Lucky Charms and Trix contain approximately 12 grams of sugar per serving, nearly five times the limit proposed by the FDA’s healthy labeling guidelines. What’s more, researchers have found that children typically eat more than twice the recommended serving size of cereal for breakfast, meaning that a typical sugary breakfast cereal portion contains 24 grams of sugar, close to the sugar content of a Snickers chocolate bar.

The food manufacturers also stressed that the FDA should consider that cereals represent an affordable and accessible option for “families who are experiencing food insecurity.” As evidence, the companies reference another General Mills-funded study to show that low-income cereal consumers had higher daily calcium intake and across all income levels, cereal eaters were associated with better diet quality.

The agency, they wrote, should recognize the beneficial role of sugar. “Sugar plays a role in foods beyond palatability; it controls water activity, creates texture, adds bulk, and also contributes to flavor complexity,” the filing states.

General Mills, Kellogg’s, and the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group for cereal manufacturers, similarly filed a protest against the FDA proposal, citing its impact on sugary cereal brands. Cereal makers produced half a dozen separate filings, counting various trade groups and individual protest letters from manufacturers.

Independent researchers, however, have found that diets high in processed foods and sugar are linked to obesity, diabetes, high risks of stroke, obesity-related cancers, hypertension, and dental diseases.

Children’s eating habits of high-sugar cereals and snacks, multiple studies have shown, are the driving factor for high levels of childhood obesity. Children are also bombarded with advertising for ultrasweet cereals, a dynamic that has been found to increase the subsequent intake of advertised cereals.

The FDA’s move to discourage sugary diets to children and curtail advertising of such foods to children echoes the Obama administration, when a variety of voluntary guidelines were proposed in 2011.

At the time, lobbyists for the food industry mobilized a broad counterassault in Congress, with allied lawmakers inserting provisions into the authorizing legislation to delay the voluntary guidelines. During this fight, the food industries hired SKDK, a consulting firm co-founded by Anita Dunn, who went on to help manage President Joe Biden’s recent campaign and currently serves as his close adviser in the White House.

The new proposed rules also expand the categories of foods that may be labeled as healthy, including nuts, higher-fat fish such as salmon, avocados, and water.

The open comment period for the FDA guidelines closed on February 16. The agency, which has offered companies three years to comply with the rule once it is finalized, is still reviewing the feedback.

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Retired Gen. Keith Alexander, a highly connected former intelligence agency official who once oversaw mass surveillance programs, is the latest high-profile executive to be accused of taking advantage of the “meme stock” craze to defraud ordinary investors.

Alexander, a current board member for Amazon who previously served as the head of U.S. Cyber Command and as director of the National Security Agency under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, allegedly misled investors through a pump-and-dump scheme that enriched him with at least $5 million.

In a securities lawsuit filed in April, investors in IronNet, a cybersecurity company co-founded by Alexander after he left the Obama administration in 2014, claim that the former general gave false promises of government contracts and inflated revenue numbers, all while selling off his shares in the company.

IronNet, which advertises systems to help public and private clients defend against a variety of hackers and other forms of electronic intrusion, relies heavily on Alexander’s image and reputation as a former intelligence official. “As commander of U.S. Cyber Command, we had responsibility for defending the nation,” says Alexander in a promotional video that runs on the company’s homepage.

Joseph Depa, a spokesperson for IronNet, declined to comment.

Plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, allege that IronNet made lofty promises as a cover for company insiders to quickly unload stock on clueless retail investors.

In August 2021, IronNet went public through a “special purpose acquisition company.” The SPAC process allows private companies to go public by leapfrogging the traditional initial public offering process through a merger with a “blank check” corporation. The trend skyrocketed over 2020 and 2021, with over 3,000 listings last year, though the investing craze has died down in recent months following a wave of investor fraud scandals associated with SPAC mergers.

On September 14, shortly after IronNet successfully completed its merger and transition into a publicly traded company, the company issued a press release projecting $75 million in annual recurring revenue for the following fiscal year through an expanded customer base. Alexander, quoted in the release, said that the company stood to take advantage of the “explosive increase in adversary activity that we are seeing.” The company website details specific cyber threats from Russia and Iran.

The next day, according to the complaint, IronNet’s stock swelled from $23.32 to $32.12, as Reddit and other platforms frequented by retail investors buzzed with enthusiasm over the role of a former NSA chief at the helm of a security contractor promising dazzling revenue growth. The 38 percent surge in price was so quick that the New York Stock Exchange briefly halted trading.

On September 20, according to the lawsuit, the chief financial officer, James Gerber, promised that “large transactions” were progressing at a company event with Wells Fargo, leading to another surge in stock price.

Then between October 18 and November 22, Alexander sold over 85 percent of his stock, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Form 4 reports, making more than $5 million. The complaint alleges that “IronNet securities were artificially inflated by Defendants’ material misstatements and omissions about the Company’s Guidance and near-term growth” and that Alexander’s stock sales “were all in a compressed and suspiciously timed five-week period.”

On December 12, 2021, IronNet reversed its projections, reducing its guidance to $30 million annual recurring revenue, a 60 percent reduction. On the news of the revised guidance, IronNet’s stock went down 31 percent that day, trading at $6.80. It now trades at slightly above $2.

SPAC fraud has become a feature of pandemic-era investing.

The IronNet lawsuit also names chief executive William Welch and the chief financial officer, Gerber, alleging they made false statements. According to the complaint, the contracts promised by Gerber did not materialize. Neither did the “new customer momentum” promised by Welch, the lawsuit says. (Matthew Olsen, a co-founder of IronNet now serving as the assistant attorney general for the National Security Division of the Justice Department, was not named in the lawsuit.)

Alexander also serves on a number of corporate boards, the most prominent of which is cloud and e-commerce giant Amazon. At Amazon, Alexander is a member of the company’s audit committee, responsible for reviewing financial statements and maintaining compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

SPAC fraud has become a feature of pandemic-era investing, with dozens of scandals and lawsuits creating a damning picture of the industry.

Electric vehicle company Nikola Corp., one of the largest early pandemic companies to go public via a SPAC, minting an overnight billionaire of founder Trevor Milton, paid $125 million to settle charges that the company misled investors with false information about its products and technical capabilities. A number of celebrities, including Jay-Z, have been criticized for lending star power to the value of SPACs, only for insiders to cash out.

But the proverbial “deep state” has also harnessed investor interest around lucrative defense contracts and government access to jump on the SPAC bandwagon. As The Intercept previously reported, officials tied to the CIA launched a SPAC at the height of investor interest last November.

IronNet stands out among other companies that went public last year with one of the most prominent former government insiders leading it.

“Because it is a former SPAC, the identity of the company is more closely tied to the expertise and influence of one individual or a small handful of individuals,” said Usha Rodrigues, a professor of law at the University of Georgia.

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In 1937, early in Eli Lilly & Company’s corporate history, Josiah Kirby Lilly Sr., the son of the founder of the company, pledged stock options to a private foundation to support a lasting philanthropic legacy to shape Indiana’s civic society.

“Our community development grantmaking focuses primarily on enhancing the quality of life in Indianapolis and Indiana,” the Lilly Endowment declares on its website. “We grant funds for human and social needs, central-city and neighborhood revitalization, low- and moderate-income housing, and arts and culture in Indianapolis.”

But many large grants distributed by the Lilly Endowment, led in part by former Eli Lilly executives and still financed by corporate stock options, are given far from Indiana to think tanks that work to shield corporations from taxation or government regulation. The foundation has provided millions of dollars over the years to libertarian groups that lobby against any price controls on insulin, a key product for Eli Lilly.

The Federalist Society, for example, has received over $1.5 million from the charitable arm over the last decade and is listed under “community development” grantees of the Lilly Endowment. The Washington, D.C.-based group is a professional society for conservative attorneys, with an eye toward pro-business ideological positions.

The Federalist Society funds included a $150,000 grant last year, at the same time that the group was sharply criticizing a new Minnesota law that forces manufacturers to provide free or affordable insulin to low-income residents. The law “[inflicts] an injustice upon companies that are regularly demonized in the media,” an attorney for the Goldwater Institute writes on the Federalist Society’s website.

The Lilly Endowment describes itself as independent and “a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location.” The board, however, includes Daniel P. Carmichael, who previously led Eli Lilly’s lobbying operations and served as a spokesperson for the company. Eli Lilly II, the great-grandson of the founder, is on the Lilly Endowment board. And Eli Lilly the corporation has touted joint philanthropic efforts with Lilly Endowment in the past.

The Lilly Endowment is also the largest shareholder of Eli Lilly, with 104,161,053 shares — an ownership stake worth approximately $31 billion.

“Lilly Endowment for many years has made modest general operating support grants to the four organizations you listed, each of which conducts public policy research and educational programs on many important issues relevant to our work in community development,” wrote Judy Cebula, a spokesperson for the Lilly Endowment, in a statement. “These grants are not restricted or directed to specific issues, and as a matter of practice we do not share publicly our discussions with potential or actual grantees.”

Over the last 80 years, the endowment has provided $10 billion to over 10,000 charitable organizations. Many of the recent grant recipients include traditional service-oriented groups, such as the Career Learning & Employment Center for Veterans in Indianapolis and the American Red Cross.

Other recipients of Lilly Endowment “community development” funds, however, have advocated on issues central to Eli Lilly’s bottom line.

Sally C. Pipes — an outspoken voice on health care issues who campaigns against single-payer and other government interventions into the health care market — is heavily funded by the Lilly Endowment, which has provided $175,000 per year in grants to her nonprofit, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, since 2015.

Pipes has authored multiple opinion columns assailing any effort to cap the monthly copayment price of insulin at $35. The proposal was part of the failed Build Back Better legislation debated last year. Last weekend, Senate Republicans defeated an amendment to attach the price cap for individuals with private health insurance to the Inflation Reduction Act before the overall bill reached passage out of the chamber. The legislation only curtails costs for Medicare Part D prescription drug beneficiaries.

The Pacific Research Institute, which has offices in Pasadena and San Francisco, has slammed a California initiative to develop a government-supported generic manufacturer of insulin to compete with for-profit drugmakers. “The state would be better served if the governor tabled this idea,” wrote a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in a column published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Lilly Endowment is also a longtime supporter of the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent think tank in Washington that opposes most health care price regulations and supports corporate tax cuts.

Last month, prior to the release of the Inflation Reduction Act negotiations, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Improving Needed Safeguards for Users of Lifesaving Insulin Now, or INSULIN, Act. The bill, like the defeated amendment, would lower insulin out-of-pocket expenses by ensuring that insurance plans waive deductibles and provide cost-saving programs to patients so that insulin never costs more than $35 per month or 25 percent of list price.

In response, AEI swiftly condemned the proposal, arguing that the INSULIN Act “would likely undermine competition and raise costs more broadly.”

Eli Lilly is one of the three companies that control the insulin industry, along with the French company Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, which is based in Denmark. Last year, Eli Lilly collected over $2.4 billion in revenue from its insulin products, including the brand Humalog, with roughly $1.3 billion of that from U.S.-based sales.

“One vial of Humalog (insulin lispro), which used to cost $21 in 1999, cost $332 in 2019, reflecting a price increase of more than 1,000%. In contrast, insulin prices in other developed countries, including neighboring Canada, have stayed the same,” wrote S. Vincent Rajkumar in the journal of the Mayo Clinic in 2020.

The political demands to address the soaring costs of insulin have grown as the price paid by patients and the government has steadily increased. The out-of-pocket spending by Medicare beneficiaries for insulin products increased from $236 million to $1.03 billion between 2007 and 2020, according to figures compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Out-of-pocket costs for individuals with high-deductible plans can require patients to pay as much as $8,000. The Minnesota law that makes insulin more accessible to low-income residents was passed in honor of Alec Smith, a 26-year-old diabetes patient who died because he rationed his insulin after struggling to pay the $1,300 monthly costs.

Repealing the Minnesota law has been a focus of the pharmaceutical industry. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug lobby group that counts Eli Lilly as a member, is currently in federal appeals court attempting to overturn the law as unconstitutional. Eli Lilly, in response to the push in Congress to regulate the costs of insulin, has deployed lobbyists on a variety of cost-control proposals, disclosures show.

In the past, Eli Lilly and other drugmakers have blamed pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate deals between pharmacies and insurance companies, for the high cost of insulin.

Update: August 11, 2022
This story was updated with a statement from the Lilly Endowment sent following publication.

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In the exclusive corridors of Congress, a small army of lobbyists representing the nation’s Ivy League and the wealthiest private universities are calling on lawmakers to cut taxes on multibillion-dollar endowments.

Earlier this year, Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow personally met with lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and members of the Massachusetts delegation, to lobby against the excise tax.

Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University have also pushed lawmakers to roll back the 1.4 percent excise tax on private college endowment investment returns passed by Congress in 2017. The excise tax, enacted as part of President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, applies to investment returns on endowment assets of $500,000 per full time equivalent student at private colleges. The formula impacts over 40 private universities around the country.

Last year, thanks to outsized investment returns, large endowments around the country grew in size. Harvard University reported a 33.6 percent return as its endowment swelled to $53.2 billion. In 2021, Stanford University announced a 40.1 percent return, with its endowment growing to $41.9 billion.

Despite the vast holdings and a student base that represents the children of the wealthiest Americans, university endowments, before the passage of this excise tax on investment returns, were otherwise largely tax-free, with donations to endowments shielded from federal and state taxes.

The mass accumulation of wealth by these elite colleges has not prevented the schools from pressing on with a demand for a special tax cut. A review of lobbying records show that private colleges have mobilized over two dozen lobbyists to pressure policymakers on repealing the tax. Harvard University, for example, has a team of staff lobbyists, along with two additional lobbyists on retainer from the law firm O’Neill, Athy & Casey, to work on the issue.

“Repealing the endowment tax would be an indirect gift to the private equity and hedge fund billionaires that already exploit too many tax breaks,” said Charlie Eaton, a sociology professor at the University of California, Merced.

As Eaton notes in his book “Bankers in the Ivory Tower,” which investigates the role of finance in higher education, elite university endowment money is pooled into investment vehicles managed by hedge funds and private equity. The arrangement means a generally tax-advantaged stream of cash for Wall Street’s leading figures, whose children are then educated at colleges and universities subsidized by these endowments.

Universities have argued that endowments are essential for funding student aid programs, and that any tax on endowment returns negatively impacts their ability to provide support for low-income students.

In May, Bacow, in conversation with David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group and now the chair of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. — a private, members-only venue, in which dues run at least $2,500 per year — the Harvard University chief complained bitterly about the unfairness of the tax.

“I think this is bad public policy. We’re a charitable institution,” said Bacow, who noted the tax meant Harvard University will pay more in federal taxes than many large corporations pay in income taxes. The tax, he also argued, was designed by Republicans to punish Democratic-leaning institutions.

“The tax was constructed disproportionately to tax institutions in liberal states,” he said.

But the comments belie a push for tax justice that is growing across the country. Massachusetts politicians have repeatedly called for a tax on private university endowments, including a proposal from former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Gonzalez, who called for a 1.6 percent tax to raise $1 billion for K-12 education, public transit, and public higher education.

In Rhode Island this year, state legislators have proposed taxes on Brown University’s endowment in order to fund public K-12 education. The money is designed as an offset over the fact that university-held land is exempt from local property taxes, starving the adjacent communities, many of which are working class, from adequate local school budget money.

State lobbying records show that Brown University has retained at least three lobbyists to oppose the endowment tax proposals.

Last week, Inside Higher Ed reported on emails from Suzanne Day, an in-house lobbyist at Harvard, encouraging colleagues to press Democratic lawmakers on the issue. The lobbyists had hoped to include a provision in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better package last year that offset the tax via payments made in institutional aid.

“I write to urge you to engage with Democratic Senators and allies to press for action on this in the pending FY22 reconciliation bill. We believe this is one of our best chances for improvement in this policy,” Day wrote in the email.

An initial draft of the bill contained the Harvard-backed provision, but the reconciliation package was sidelined after objections were raised by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.

Though the path through Build Back Better remains uncertain, members of Congress have other routes through which to hand elite universities a tax cut. Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., a member of the influential Ways and Means Committee that oversees tax policy, has a separate bill to repeal the tax.

Harvard University’s lobbyists did not respond to a request for comment.

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John Merrell, speaking in a southern drawl, apologized for presenting over Zoom in such casual attire. The lack of a jacket and tie, he said, was intentional. He was on-site with a client.

“I figured this group would appreciate as much as any that you know, when you’ve got a lawyer in your facility, you usually don’t want them to come in looking all lawyered up,” said Merrell, a management labor attorney at the firm Ogletree Deakins, a South Carolina-based law firm that specializes in closely advising businesses on how to counter union organizing drives. “I’m trying to be somewhat incognito.”

The group had gathered to speak candidly about creative new ways in which employers can subtly counter union organizing. There’s a “huge uptick in activity,” Merrell began, not just at name brand companies like Starbucks, but union drives “even in the Carolinas where [I am] based, we’re seeing a lot of an uptick of activity in some kind of unexpected places, unexpected industries, not the industries that you typically think of as being your unionized industries.”

In the “heyday” for union organizing, he continued, “we just thought of them as seeking better wages and working conditions for their workers.” Now, workers were agitating for respect and in opposition to “harassment, bigotry, discrimination and retaliation,” said Merrell, quoting a mission statement from the Alphabet Workers Union, which secured bargaining rights for a small group of Google Fiber workers in Kansas City, Missouri, in March.

Corporations, advised Merrell, should be ready to pivot and respond quickly to these “social justice-driven” campaigns.

Across the country, particularly in highly educated workplaces, employee activism has centered on demands that go beyond the bread and butter of higher salaries and better retirement benefits. YouTube and Facebook employees have demanded that management take a greater role in censoring content viewed as sexist or racist. Amazon corporate headquarters workers this month staged a protest to demand that the company restrict the sales of books that are perceived by some activist groups as anti-trans. The union that represents workers at NPR has demanded that the media outlet develop demographic tools to track the race and gender of every source that appears in stories.

Workers now have a “heightened focus on the optics” of race, continued Merrell, so management should do more to match the demographics of the workforce. “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” initiatives, social consciousness raising, and constant surveys were all on the table as tools to monitor employee sentiment.

Merrell’s presentation was just one in a two-day April conference that showcased the changing face of union-busting. Over a dozen other presenters who work in “union avoidance” gave talks during the virtual conference, sponsored by a group called CUE, on the latest trends in organizing, strike-breaking, and how to get ahead of changes in the law and political environment that could provide an edge to the labor movement. They included representatives from Kellogg’s, John Deere, Five Below, Lowe’s, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as a consultant hired by Amazon to oppose the warehouse worker union drives.

In the new environment, businesses facing worker uprisings are attempting to co-opt the language of social justice movements and embrace trends around self-growth and positive lifestyles to counter demands for unionization — a far cry from the old days of union prevention, a history that featured employers routinely threatening workers with private guards and violent clashes on the picket lines.

Businesses facing worker uprisings are attempting to co-opt the language of social justice movements and embrace trends around self-growth and positive lifestyles to counter demands for unionization.

Leny Riebli, the vice president of human resources at Ross Stores, noted that given “what’s happening at Amazon and Starbucks,” her company had retooled its training to remain union-free. “We really had to redouble our efforts,” said Riebli. The company, said Riebli, closely monitors employee concerns that might spill over into support for unionization, so managers have been trained not only to spot potential “card check” organizing, but also listen for issues around safety, scheduling, and respect in the workplace.

“This relates to our diversity, equality and inclusion efforts,” explained Riebli, noting that the company sought managers who can be approachable to an array of worker issues.

Virtually none of the presenters identified explicitly as anti-union agents. Many described themselves or had professional biographies emphasizing their role as DEI experts, developers of “human capital,” and champions of workplace “belonging.” The industry has undergone somewhat of a rebranding, with many labor relations executives now identifying as “people experts” and diversity executives.

Even the host of the conference was camouflaged. The conference was organized by a group called CUE, which bills itself publicly as simply “a community for positive employee relations.” But that sunny image belies its true agenda: Founded in 1977 by the National Association of Manufacturers, as part of a sweeping crusade against organized labor, CUE is formally known as the “Council for a Union-Free Environment.” The organization provides research and training for the union suppression tactics, an estimated $340-million-per-year cottage industry of lawyers and consultants who specialize in assisting corporations with mitigating the threat of organized labor.

But there was no doubt that they understood how controversial their work can be. Ken Hurley, the vice president of Kellogg’s Co. for human resources and labor relations who presided over the effort last year to replace striking cereal workers, said he did not want participants to share his slide deck, for fear of leaks. And, after The Intercept published his remarks in which he described the union as “behaving more like terrorists than partners,” Hurley left Kellogg’s.

Union workers rally in support of unionizing Alabama Amazon workers in downtown Los Angeles on March 22, 2021.

Photo: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

So-called union avoidance consultants, also known as persuaders, work in a specialty profession that has been honed in recent decades. They are hired by corporations to train managers to spot union sympathies or to lead “captive audience” lectures — where attendance is mandatory — to pressure workers against voting for a union.

These seminars can involve threats of retaliation, warnings that a union will force the company to close down, and claims that union dues will negate any benefit of a union contract. But the most important aspect of these meetings, experts say, can be collecting information to identify union supporters within a workplace so that they may be sidelined or fired before they gain influence with their co-workers.

The industry has undergone somewhat of a rebranding, with many labor relations executives now identifying as “people experts” and diversity executives.

The persuader industry has evolved to match the cultural trends among many workers. Jason Greer, who has led a diversity seminar at CUE in the past, embodies the evolution of the anti-union industry to match cultural trends among workers. Greer, founder of the eponymous business Greer Consulting, is a persuader who helps companies fend off unionization drives, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from talking to him.

“I do leadership coaching. I do diversity management training,” said Greer. “I’m known as the employee whisperer within my industry.”

Major corporations are at once under pressure to appear sensitive to employees from marginalized groups and eager to blunt unionization efforts that would hurt their bottom line. Thanks to consultants like Greer and others, these companies can sometimes kill two birds with one stone by wrapping anti-union talking points in a patina of racial sensitivity and commitment to diversity; Greer’s company advertises “labor relations” alongside “diversity training.”

Over the last year, Greer and his team have worked for B&H Photo, Keurig Dr Pepper, Studio in a School, and Blues City Brewery, and are paid as much as $2,000 per day to pressure workers not to join a labor union. B&H, notably, settled a federal racial discrimination lawsuit in 2017, and agreed to paying $3.2 million in back pay to over 1,300 individuals.

Employees, said Greer, fundamentally want respect and dignity on the job. Listening to worker demands, he explained, can prevent workers from drifting toward a third party, like a labor union. In some cases, that means providing seminars on leadership and understanding, or creating employee resource groups that provide special recognition to marginalized communities.

“People will work for money, but they will die for respect and die for recognition,” continued Greer. “If your employees are talking about wanting diversity and inclusion practices, don’t shut your eyes and, you know, shut your ears to that.”

The Labor Pros, a Florida-based firm that runs anti-union campaigns across the country, prominently presents a diverse team that conducts diversity training adjacent to interventions to remove the “union threat.”

Nekeya Nunn, the chief executive officer of the Labor Pros, has adopted terminology from left-wing, activist spaces. “I’m a proponent of listening, heart-led leaders, people who make decisions on how they would want somebody else to treat them,” said Nunn, in an interview with The Intercept.

Nunn echoed Merrell’s argument, that employees care as much about dignity as wages and benefits. “People unionize against bad managers, not bad companies,” she said. Programs that help people from different demographics and different nationalities integrate are simply part of a positive workplace culture, she continued. “People work for companies that make them feel valued and included, so if that’s a tactic to not have a union, then so be it.”

A contract obtained by The Intercept shows that the Labor Pros provided a menu of options to Hilton Hotels last year on options for persuading workers against joining a union. The firm offered up to four consultants to speak to 80 employees for four days at a cost of $43,120, plus per diem.

Danine Clay and Byron Clay of the firm Diverse Workforce Consultants are among the union avoidance professionals who have worked on recent high-profile campaigns to persuade workers against joining a union at Hershey’s and at Mission Hospital in North Carolina, according to disclosures. Their firm touts its “ability to empower management with employee selection, retention, diversity training and skills, and union avoidance tools and strategies are unmatched.”

Danine Clay was listed on disclosure forms as a consultant for Amazon engaged in persuading warehouse workers not to join a union. Over the phone, she said the disclosure form was incorrect but declined to comment further.

“There’s kind of a jiujitsu, to get employees thinking about racial justice issues, at least superficially, as a way to deflect labor and collective bargaining,” said Michael C. Duff, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. Duff attended law school after union organizing cost him his job in the trucking industry. He understands why the diversity, equity, and inclusion field has become an asset for companies hoping to skirt unionization — particularly at a time when employee interest in both is rising rapidly.

“Labor consultant folks converting into DEI folks,” added Duff. “It’s really a wonderful kind of psyops, right, because these people are supposed to be close to employees.”

The approach is on display in some of the most high-profile union battles going on now. One example is Starbucks, which has faced growing unionization pressure as over 100 stores have voted to join a union. The company, in response, launched an anti-union website earlier this year. Among the reasons not to join a union? The Starbucks website says the firm already provides an “inclusive” environment and maintains a strong commitment to diverse hiring practices.

So far, the approach has mostly backfired for the company. “Starbucks claims to be a progressive company, and they’re using this social justice language, but people see past that,” said Joseph Thompson, a student barista who organized two Starbucks locations in Santa Cruz, California.

Thompson has corresponded with other baristas seeking to form unions around the country as far away as Idaho. Many have voiced frustration at the company’s union-busting tactics in contrast to its purported values, he said.

Despite the rosy image of inclusiveness and activism touted in Starbucks press releases, the company has been accused of over 200 violations of federal labor laws, and over 20 baristas say they have been illegally fired in retaliation for attempting to form a union.

“It’s a brutal anti-union campaign, but also one that tries to appeal to the sort of progressive sensibilities of the kinds of people who work at Starbucks,” said John Logan, professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Effective or not, it’s becoming a standard playbook. Princeton University, in a page outlining “alternatives to unionizing” for graduate students, notes that the school already welcomes input on all areas of university life, such as professional development and diversity and inclusion. Princeton University has so far prevailed: The graduate student union has not held a unionization vote, there is no recognition to bargain with the graduate students, and they do not have a contract.

When workers at vegan food company No Evil Foods, which makes imitation meat products sold at Whole Foods and other upscale groceries, held captive audience anti-union seminars, the company warned workers about the “old white guys” in union leadership and compared union dues to taxpayers funding President Donald Trump’s golf junkets.

In other records leaked out of the No Evil Foods seminars, workers were warned that unions were hotbeds of sexism and sexual harassment, and did not share the vegan food manufacturer’s progressive values. The union drive at the firm ultimately failed.

“Corporations are trying to hijack the language of liberation as a way to prevent workers from having a voice at the table and a say in their jobs.”

Critics say that many corporations merely channel concerns around racial injustice into a reputation-laundering strategy, one that can serve the bottom line of keeping workers in check. “For lack of a better word, we’re in this woke moment,” said Wes McEnany, a former organizer with CODE-CWA, a project of the Communication Workers of America to unionize the tech industry. “Corporations are trying to hijack the language of liberation as a way to prevent workers from having a voice at the table and a say in their jobs.”

McEnany noted that when he worked on a campaign to organize workers at Mapbox, a technology firm that provides custom online maps, management responded with accusations of bigotry, claiming efforts to prevent the offshoring of jobs reeked of “xenophobia.”

Medium, the publishing website launched by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, countered a union organizing drive with a promise to increase spending on diversity and inclusion efforts, according to McEnany. After the union vote failed by one vote, Medium liquidated its primary editorial division.

Such left-leaning language and promises were on display in the recent organizing drive at REI, the outdoor clothing and equipment retailer. The company this year posted an internal podcast featuring its chief executive, Eric Artz, and the company’s chief diversity and social impact officer, Wilma Wallace, discussing why “REI doesn’t think unionization is the right thing for the co-op or for the employees.”

Much of the conversation centered on claims that a union would hamper the company’s ability to “listen and communicate directly with our employees” and reduce the company’s ability to be flexible in resolving workplace concerns. Such arguments are routine in most organizations facing a union vote.

But what stood out was the language of social justice that filled the discussion. Wallace began the talk by stating her preferred pronouns and a land acknowledgement to honor the “traditional lands of the Ohlone people.” Artz, while arguing against unionization, peppered his remarks with comments about how REI intends to maintain its focus on “inclusion” and “racial equity.”

Finally, Dollar General is perhaps one of the most glaring retailers facing criticism for its labor practices. The company, in its latest annual disclosure, reported that its median annual salary for workers was $17,773. Workers have cited broken air conditioners, mold in the break rooms, and little safety precautions for employees who face constant robberies and violent incidents within stores. The widespread problems have led to a worker revolt, including store clerks posting TikTok videos of unsanitary work environments and grossly understaffed stores, and some moving toward demands for a labor union to negotiate better conditions.

Dollar General has responded with an aggressive anti-union effort that is overseen by Kathy Reardon, the company’s chief people officer. In public, Reardon is touted for leading the discount retailer’s “ongoing diversity and inclusion journey” and for creating an “allyship guide that helps employees play an active role in creating a more inclusive environment.”

Records show that Reardon is involved in the hiring of $2,700-per day consultants who have helped the firm defeat a push for a labor union at its Connecticut locations.

One of the most insidious tactics have been the use of supposed employee resource groups, also known as affinity groups or ERGs, to undermine labor activism. Many companies offer specific ERGs for Asian, Black, Latino, or LGBTQ+ individuals, among other identity-based suborganizations as part of a larger diversity and inclusion program.

The management-sanctioned groups are attempts to create safe spaces for historically marginalized identities to voice shared concerns and create a sense of community within the workplace. According to a study published last year by McKinsey & Co. that surveyed 423 organizations employing 12 million people, close to 35 percent of firms have added or expanded ERGs since 2020.

Supporters of these initiatives say these groups provide a useful channel to improve communications and spotlight company practices that might be shaped by racial biases or lack of sensitivity to minority cultures.

These lofty goals, however, at times run parallel to or even in conjunction with anti-union measures at some firms. IRI Consultants, a union avoidance firm, noted in one publication that unions in some industries, particularly high tech, have drifted toward capitalizing on demands that employers do a better job of hiring diverse talent. One way to “union-proof your business,” IRI claims, is to develop “effective leadership, consistent employee training, and diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives that address challenges like unconscious bias in the human resources (HR) process.”

“When people feel powerless, resentment festers until someone comes along, like a union representative saying, ‘You have a right to be heard. We can help you get a voice in your workplace, and your employer will have to listen,’” IRI noted in another publication.

In response, IRI suggests the creation of ERGs within a workplace. “If you don’t give today’s employees a voice, the workforce is likely to have a low engagement level, and the union is going to see an opportunity,” warns IRI.

ERGs are becoming more and more common. CUE, along with Littler Mendelson and Jackson Lewis, two of the largest union suppression law firms, have encouraged them.

That’s because ERGs can provide a useful corporate alternative to unions that places management in control. The tech reporting site Protocol noted that when tech firms such as Mapbox faced a union organizing drive, the company kicked off DEI-related efforts, including ERGs, in order to allay worker concerns.

“ERGs kind of passively work against the idea of a union in that they’re a way for you to kind of spend your energy without it turning into anything,” one tech worker told the media outlet.

When Google, notably, hired IRI Consultants to suppress union activism within the tech giant, the decision, recent court documents show, was made by the then-chief diversity officer, Danielle Brown, who previously led the firm’s ERG programs.

“The ERG is essentially the company’s union. … It’s more about surveillance, about keeping an eye on workers.”

“The ERG is essentially the company’s union. It’s engaged in this way: ‘Oh, you’re from a marginalized identity group, you have a place to speak,’” said McEnany, the organizer. “But if you talk to a lot of workers interested in real change, they see this as a way to throw money for a party. It’s more about surveillance, about keeping an eye on workers.”

In the late 19th and early 20th century, in the early days of the U.S. labor movement, corporations facing labor activism would often create fake union organizations controlled by management. These so-called company unions would provide a false sense of worker empowerment, with some fringe benefits like a pool hall or recreation center, while keeping wage and benefit decisions controlled by corporate leaders.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, which enshrined federal labor union rights, expressly outlawed the formation of company unions. Corporations cannot form worker organizations that claim to negotiate on behalf of employees.

“Company unions were a major concern of Sen. [Robert F.] Wagner because it’s very easy for a working person to mistake these groups as third parties,” said Duff, the University of Wyoming law professor.

The movement to create ERGs at a time when workers demand better conditions could be a violation of labor law, Duff argued.

“It’s a distraction. The idea is, ‘We’re going to siphon off energy that might be devoted to creating your own arms-length groups that would be adversarial,’” he added.

Nunn, of the Labor Pros, agreed that operating ERGs in some ways could run in violation of the National Labor Relations Act but questioned the wisdom of such prohibitions. “So workers get what they want, companies could not have to deal with a union if they didn’t want, and employees would still feel they’re fairly compensated and they work in a just environment that speaks up on social justice issues. It would make unions obsolete,” said Nunn.

“If a company is willing to create those things outside of the union, outside the labor union, what’s the problem with that?” she asked.

The success or failure of a union election is almost always determined by knowledge of the workforce and an intimate understanding of the values and beliefs of each employee. The union suppression industry has made workforce intelligence gathering a key element of its trade.

In the ’70s and ’80s, industrial psychologist Charles Hughes trained over 27,000 managers and supervisors to “make unions unnecessary.” One of his methods was to promote the use of surveys to collect information about workers. Employers signed up by the hundreds to attend Hughes’s talks, including a seminar titled, “Attitude Survey Techniques for Measuring Union Sentiments.” CUE — which hosted the conference — helped streamline the emerging industry of management consultants, industrial psychologists, and law firms that helped turn the tide against the labor movement, which has declined precipitously since the ’70s.

“It’s intimate to talk about race and identity,” said Duff. “That creates a vulnerability, and to have consultants come in and say, ‘Hey, look, I understand the discrimination you’ve gone through, you can open up to me,’ that can get you a lot of valuable intelligence.”

Such vulnerabilities can be key insights during an organizing drive. In 2011, Pratt Logistics opened a new plant in Pennsylvania. The company brought in a man who only identified himself as an efficiency expert named “Jay.” Jay went around conducting one-on-one interviews with workers, asking them about what problems they faced, their values, and concerns.

Later, when truckers and warehouse workers at Pratt began steps to form a union at the new plant, the company instantly fired union sympathizers. It wasn’t until later that they found out Jay’s real identity: Jason Greer, the union suppression consultant, who had been hired explicitly to identify potential union supporters.

When the Teamsters union later brought the case to court, arguing illegal retaliation and unfair labor practices, labor attorneys noted that Greer on his website explicitly advertised himself as a “union buster” who “wakes up every day with one goal in mind, and that’s to keep unions from taking over and ruining businesses that my friends and my clients have worked their entire lives to build.”

Those words are gone from Greer’s website. Now he lists himself as a diversity consultant.

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Katie Lev, a lead consultant hired to persuade workers to oppose unionization efforts at Amazon warehouses, raised the alarm last week about growing labor activism, speaking at a small gathering of other union suppression professionals and corporate labor relations attorneys.

“Wow, have things started changing in union organizing just since I put this presentation together,” said Lev at the annual meeting for CUE, a trade group for labor relations professionals, last week. There are more petitions to form unions, greater media interest in union campaigns, greater online communication among labor activists, and an emboldened union environment, fueled by independent organizing at firms such as Amazon, Lev’s client.

Lev said many of the details for her talk were informed by her years of experience. In 2021, Lev’s company, Lev Labor LLC, was paid $371,676 by Amazon to persuade workers against joining a union. Disclosures show that she has other anti-union engagements with Mapbox, Albertsons, and a North Carolina hospital owned by HCA Healthcare. But her talk also featured inside information gleaned directly from labor unions.

“So very recently, within the last year, the AFL-CIO put out an organizing webinar on campaign strategy,” said Lev. The site, she said, was password-protected, but she gained access by finding the login credentials easily on the union’s website. (One of the unions organizing Amazon workers, RWDSU, is a member of the AFL-CIO.)

The union webinar, said Lev, strongly encouraged workers to form separate communication channels on online messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp and Signal, to relay information about organizing efforts. And then unions have stepped up efforts to build group identity, with tactics to capture workers early on by wearing union T-shirts and committing to a union with their families, making any dissent from the union difficult.

Lev Labor did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept.

In early April, 8,000 Amazon workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize, a historic first for the company. The effort was led by Christian Smalls, a former Amazon worker who formed an independent union and campaigned almost every day at the bus stop used by workers to commute.

In leaked memos, Amazon’s general counsel David Zapolsky described Smalls as “not smart, or articulate.” In 2020, the company fired Smalls after he organized a work stoppage during the early days of the pandemic over the lack of hygiene and protective products provided to workers. The company claimed it had fired him over “violating social distancing guidelines.”

Lev referenced Smalls as a “fired employee” who staged a walkout, “then set up a tent outside the building, giving out free food, free weed, and playing music.” The campaign, Lev said, prevailed, and corporations should be wary that “unions are going to figure out a way to mimic” the independent Amazon organizing campaign success.

The Covid-19 pandemic, Lev explained, has created a fertile ground for union organizing.

The remote work dynamics have made workers not only more “tech-savvy,” she said, but social distancing rules have made it difficult for employers to force workers to attend meetings designed to persuade workers against a labor union. New York rules until recently, Lev noted, prevented small group meetings, effectively making “captive audience” meetings — a term of art for anti-union presentations that companies require workers to attend — impossible to schedule.

Union organizers also curtailed home visits because of Covid, said Lev. “I’m a little disappointed, because that was a very good tactic to help me as I’m running a campaign because people get mad when someone shows up at their house,” she laughed.

Lev also said that what distinguishes Amazon and similar campaigns, such as the growing movement to unionize Starbucks, is the profile of the workers.

“What happened at Starbucks and what’s happened to Amazon is not just the employees, it’s college students, college graduates, law school students getting jobs, either in Amazon warehouses or in Starbucks stores as baristas, and using that job to build their organizing resume,” said Lev.

During the question and answer portion of her presentation, Lev pushed back against the notion that these workers are naive.

“Gen Z campaigns are led by people with purple hair and tattoos, but I do not think they are naive.”

“Gen Z campaigns are led by people with purple hair and tattoos, but I do not think they are naive,” she said. “They know exactly what they are doing, and they’re often fresh out of law school and they’re activists. And it’s not hard to come in as a young person into a facility and bring a group of younger employees onto your bandwagon. So they’re not, it’s not the employees that necessarily are leading it, they’re partnering with outside organizing and using a different kind of salt than they have used historically.”

The term “salt” refers to a union organizer who joins a company with the intention of sparking an organizing campaign from the inside.

During her talk, Lev echoed many of the same themes articulated by Ken Hurley, the now-former vice president of labor relations for Kellogg’s, who also spoke at the event. Hurley was let go after The Intercept made public his comments describing the union as “terrorists.” Lev warned repeatedly that workers are changing the media dynamic by filming allegedly unsafe or unseemly behavior by managers and posting the materials on social media.

“The unions are creating viral videos creating reasons to get employees more interested than just talking about the issues,” said Lev.

Amazon has moved aggressively to prevent unionization at its facilities. The company spent $4.3 million on persuasion consultants such as Lev last year.

That total doesn’t include money for outside advertising or public relations, such as work by Democratic firm Global Strategy Group, which placed online ads against the union campaign. Nor does it include high-priced law firms such as Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, which has filed National Labor Relations Board petitions on behalf of Amazon charging that unions violated the law.

Amazon also relied heavily on its internal intelligence unit, made up of former law enforcement personnel and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. The company formed a “Labor Activity Playbook” and carefully monitored worker actions.

Despite the defeat last month, Amazon won its latest campaign against the union. On Monday, in a setback for organizing efforts, workers at the LDJ5 warehouse, also in Staten Island, rejected a bid for unionization.

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Earlier this week, in a meeting of employer-side attorneys and union suppression consultants, Ken Hurley, the vice president of human resources and labor relations at The Kellogg Co., spoke candidly about a new environment that has shifted the traditional power of employers and emboldened workers and labor unions.

In hushed tones, Hurley described the tactics employed by activists during a nearly 10-week cereal plant strike last fall. The strike prevented concessions from workers and forced Kellogg’s to back off a plan to expand its two-tier wage system. “In my view,” Hurley said, “the union leadership at the bargaining table were behaving more like terrorists than partners.”

The conversation was hosted by a human resources and labor relations trade group called CUE. Hurley said he was surprised by the aggressive nature of the union, which generally has not engaged in confrontational tactics or strikes. Hurley claimed that the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union, which represented workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants, “really became somewhat intoxicated” by other strikes last year, including work stoppages at plants owned by Frito-Lay and Nabisco.

What’s more, he said, workers at the plants benefited from outside support that hasn’t existed in the recent past. Plant employees and union activists galvanized support on social media, including Facebook and TikTok, while Kellogg’s management had trouble connecting with workers.

And in an unprecedented moment, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh walked in solidarity along the picket line with Kellogg’s workers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. President Joe Biden later in December issued a statement sharply criticizing efforts by Kellogg’s to bring in nonunion replacement workers during the strike.

The Biden statement, said Hurley, was “basically an anti-Kellogg public release. … We were really getting it from both barrels.”

Reached for comment, Kellogg Chairman and CEO Steve Cahillane issued a statement in response to Hurley’s presentation at CUE. “We are just learning about these statements, as they were not authorized by Kellogg. We are embarrassed as a company – the comments and the tone in which they were delivered do not reflect the values of our organization or our position,” wrote Cahillane. “We sincerely apologize. We have a long and productive history of working with our unions. We fully expect that will continue moving forward.”

Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local 3G, which represents workers at the Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s plant, bristled at the description of his union as “terrorists.”

“This is a company that keeps coming to the table with hundreds of millions of dollars of profit yet thinks it’s OK to take away from the worker. That’s what this strike boiled down to,” said Bidelman.

The negotiations centered on a two-tier system of pay for many workers, with lower wages of $9 an hour and partial benefits for “transitional workers.” This was a sticking point for union activists, in addition to higher overall wages. The final contract, signed in December, provides cost-of-living adjustments and a pathway for low-paid transitional workers to become full-time “legacy” employees, who make nearly three times as much.

“You know, Ken Hurley fully believes that U.S. Kellogg’s workers have too much and we should be giving things back to make sure the business succeeds,” said Bidelman. “Well, I’m sorry, nobody stood up for 20 years and everybody kept acquiescing to the fact that CEOs get paid $10 million and stock profits,” he added.

“This is a company that keeps coming to the table with hundreds of millions of dollars of profit yet thinks it’s OK to take away from the worker. That’s what this strike boiled down to.”

At the conference, Hurley also spoke in awe and derision of a new media startup that covers labor activism, More Perfect Union, which brought viral attention to the strike by interviewing workers and spotlighting creative attempts on Reddit to stifle strike-breaking attempts by Kellogg’s. More Perfect Union was founded in 2021 by Faiz Shakir, formerly Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign manager.

A reporter for More Perfect Union, Hurley said, “ambushed” him when he went to Washington, D.C., for negotiations with BCTGM. “It’s a George Soros-funded, pro-union activist organization; they had a camera, and a reporter was asking us questions as we entered the room,” said Hurley.

Later, during a question-and-answer portion of the conference, Hurley called More Perfect Union a “worthy adversary” and “very sophisticated.” The media outlet, he added, churns out “very impactful videos, and they’re a force to be reckoned with. … I will say, it’s really impossible for a company, a large company, to combat the kind of cinematography and emotion that comes out of those social media posts when they’re produced so well.”

The negotiation “ambush” interview, he said, “was all set up by the union.”

Kellogg’s comments did not surprise Shakir, who laughed at Hurley’s characterization of his small media team as more powerful than Kellogg’s, which has a market capitalization of over $23 billion and teams of lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations experts. He clarified that his organization has received grant money from the Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic network backed by billionaire George Soros.

“The purpose of covering the stories of working people is to make them feel like they have power, and that’s exactly what these union-busters are responding to.”

More Perfect Union, Shakir said, did not coordinate with the union and does not “accept any funding, not one penny, from any union.” The labor union establishment, added Shakir, doesn’t want his media outlet involved in contract negotiations and is generally opposed to confrontational tactics on behalf of workers.

During the meeting this week, Hurley warned the other employers in attendance — including representatives of John Deere, Ross Stores, and Lowe’s — that companies need to “think in new ways and more creatively about how to connect on a personal level with their workforce.” Kellogg’s, Hurley said, set up a special contract negotiations website, monitored social media posts, and communicated almost every day of the contract talks. But it was too little, too late. “We needed to start that four years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, so that we engage our workforce directly.”

“You got to throw out the playbook. You’ve got to get aggressive, you’ve got to take some risks, you’ve got to get your story out there,” said Hurley.

For proponents of labor power, the Kellogg’s executive’s comments simply reinforce the notion that more labor activism yields greater impact and more victories for working-class Americans. “After strikes at Kellogg’s and John Deere and Kroger, and the victory at Amazon, so many workers now take inspiration from each other,” said Shakir.

“The purpose of covering the stories of working people is to make them feel like they have power,” continued Shakir, “and that’s exactly what these union-busters are responding to. They are fearful and afraid of the fact workers might be taking matters into their own hands to reclaim power and rights that are rightfully theirs.”

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Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., will be headed to a billionaire-backed gathering in Los Angeles on April 30.

The private event, per an email shared with The Intercept, will be at the home of billionaire Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, an investment fund that specializes in distressed debt. The invitation also lists “MILKEN,” likely billionaire Michael Milken, whose eponymous institute is hosting its annual global conference in LA the following day.

The event, which is hosted by No Labels, comes as Manchin is mulling another round of reconciliation talks to pass a major economic and climate bill — the last chance to do so before the 2022 midterms.

Manchin is one of the most prominent members of No Labels, a political action committee largely funded by finance industry leaders that rallied moderate members of both parties to oppose President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better package of reforms, including a universal preschool program, the extension of the child tax credit, and the establishment of a hearing aid benefit for Medicare beneficiaries.

Last year, Manchin participated in a Zoom meeting with No Labels leaders, including several of the wealthiest Wall Street executives in the country such as Marks, to privately share his insight into filibuster reform, voting rights legislation, and his thinking on other Biden administration policies.

Marks, who owns two homes in the Los Angeles area, a $26 million mansion in the Holmby Hills area and an estate in Beverly Hills, is a major donor to moderate lawmakers. This cycle, he donated the maximum to No Labels leaders Reps. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, two of the most conservative House Democrats facing serious primary challenges.

Milken — who became famous trading junk bonds, pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and was later pardoned by former President Donald Trump — has not made donations to candidates this cycle.

No Labels previously raised hundreds of thousands for a special fund to bolster the efforts of a group of conservative House Democrats opposed to a stepped-up version of the Build Back Better package. The financial support was designed to provide a buffer for the lawmakers to oppose House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and progressive members who wanted greater spending on social welfare programs, efforts that have now stalled in the Senate following opposition from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.

This week, Manchin entered into last-minute discussions to revive the reconciliation path to pass a special energy and climate bill. Manchin has expressed openness to raising the corporate tax rate to 25 percent in order to pay for an array of tax subsidies and programs to boost an “all-of-the-above” energy plan that features investments in electric vehicles, carbon capture technology, and natural gas.

Manchin’s office and No Labels did not respond to a request for comment.

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Since the Mountain Valley pipeline was announced eight years ago, the proposal to transport fracked natural gas from West Virginia to export terminals in southern Virginia has faced regulatory hurdles and local opposition. The main concern is that the project runs through environmentally sensitive waterways and farmlands, putting them at risk of spills — while further promoting the development of fracking throughout West Virginia.

Now, after nearly a decade of lobbying, the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine appears to have turned the tide, with federal regulators supporting a construction route that could bring the pipeline into service as early as next year.

Filings show that the pipeline’s boosters were quick to capitalize on the Ukraine crisis to sway policymakers. In federal appellate courts last month, attorneys for the pipeline project argued that with the U.S. ban on imports of Russian natural gas, “domestic supplies will become all the more important to the nation’s energy needs.” Completing the pipeline, the attorneys wrote, “indisputably would provide a meaningful step toward building out U.S. oil and gas infrastructure, freeing up additional natural gas for domestic consumption and export to Europe.” Other pipeline supporters, including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., heavily cited the war in Ukraine to press administration officials to swiftly approve the project as a matter of national security.

Soon after, on April 8, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously approved the plans to build the pipeline across 180 bodies of water and wetlands, a decision that analysts view as the final step in overcoming the hurdles that had placed the project in jeopardy for years.

The progression of the West Virginia pipeline project is one of many fossil fuel priorities now reshaped by the devastation wrought by the war in Ukraine. In the first days of the war, the American Petroleum Institute, which represents industry giants such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, argued that it heightened the need for greater development of U.S. oil and gas reserves and for expedited approval of pipelines and other infrastructure.

“As crisis looms in Ukraine, U.S. energy leadership is more important than ever,” API tweeted at the outset of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Soon after, other oil and gas companies joined the fray. In early March, the chief executives of TC Energy, Enbridge, the Williams Companies, and Kinder Morgan cited the war to call for the rapid approval of natural gas pipelines that have faced opposition from activists and regulators.

Critics of the industry immediately countered that more fossil fuel development would take too long to provide any short-term relief. Gas and oil are global commodities, and small increases in U.S. production won’t have any immediate impact on domestic energy prices.

But rising utility and gas prices have rattled policymakers. Last month, following pressure from industry sources, including natural gas exporters, the Biden administration rolled back plans to evaluate natural gas pipelines on climate and environmental justice grounds. The Interior Department also announced a plan on April 15 to resume the sale of leases to drill on federal lands for oil and gas.

In recent weeks, more and more fossil fuel interests have piled on. This month, lawyers for Sempra Energy filed a letter to FERC urging approval of the North Baja pipeline, a project to transport liquified natural gas to export terminals on Mexico’s western coast. The project, the attorneys said, carried additional urgency “in light of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine” and “concerns about energy security for Europe and Central Asia.”

In recent weeks, more and more fossil fuel interests have piled on.

TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, filed an amended request for approval of its Alberta XPress project, which would expand an existing natural gas pipeline system. The “beneficial domestic and international end uses” of the project, the company said, have “recently grown exponentially” with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the need for oil and gas exports to the global market.

K&L Gates, a law firm that represents Rio Grande LNG, a project to construct a site with five liquified natural gas trains in Texas, similarly petitioned FERC, calling for quick approval action given “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the stranglehold Russia has on Europe’s energy supply.”

Fossil fuel-backed interests are also attempting to use the Ukraine war to shape the Biden administration’s proposed rules around carbon capture and sequestration. Harry MacDougald, an attorney who has led industry-backed lawsuits to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions, filed comments to the White House Council on Environmental Quality arguing that any carbon capture rules should not limit the potential for greater oil and gas development. “With Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, the national imperative of increasing U.S. petroleum production is readily apparent,” MacDougald wrote.

Lobbyists for a range of other industries — including power plants, refrigerator manufacturers, software developers, and telecommunications providers — have also wasted no time in using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a talking point to influence decisions on a wide array of policies, from tariffs to environmental rules. The comments range from urgent calls to action on vital economic issues to precarious arguments that stretch the imagination to fit the Ukraine crisis into a domestic U.S. context.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank backed by business interests including Google, filed a document with the Federal Trade Commission opposing new guidelines for enforcement against business mergers that pose monopolization risks. The think tank argued that a transparent process for such a potentially costly new enforcement regime was important to consider, particularly given the “geopolitical uncertainty surrounding Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The American Public Power Association, the lobby group that represents electric utilities around the country, including a large number of coal-burning power plants, in March submitted comments to the EPA opposing new limits on wastewater pollution, in part by pointing to the “immense pressure on fuel and energy prices” caused by “the recent war in Ukraine.”

Microsoft and the U.S. Telecom Association have filed letters with the Commerce Department urging greater government investments in semiconductor development by pointing to the supply chain problems worsened by the war in Ukraine. “The shortage has been further exacerbated by Russia’s war with Ukraine, which has strained the supply chain for critical minerals and other raw materials and exposed further vulnerabilities in the semiconductor supply chain,” wrote Sarah O’Neal, an attorney with Microsoft.

Ukraine provided about half of the global supply of semiconductor-grade neon, a colorless and odorless gas used to control lasers for the production of specialized computer chips. The shortage from the war, with plants in eastern Ukraine under occupation, has alarmed automotive manufacturers. The Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, the automotive parts trade group, called attention to the potential global shortage in a letter urging the Biden administration to take rapid action to bolster the domestic semiconductor supply.

And the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute and the North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers are among the lobby groups pushing for a relaxation of U.S. tariffs on steel by citing the crisis in Ukraine.

Other petitioners urging relaxed U.S. government interference in the market are less persuasive. Mike Schafer, the head of a fish processing plant, petitioned the Biden administration for “laws changed to bring fish products to humanitarian use and K through 12 school lunch programs.” Schafer asked for a range of government support for the fishing industry, including grants for international marketing to feed “all the refugees from Ukraine” who “could really use fish protein.”

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In January, The Markup revealed a list of apps that have sold location data to X-Mode, a controversial data broker that claims to cover “25%+ of the Adult U.S. population monthly.” The data broker, which has faced intense criticism from privacy advocates, tracks the location and movement of users by planting special lines of code in over 100 apps, including data, music, weather, and Muslim prayer apps.

Federal contracting records show that both the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security are among the federal agencies that have recently contracted with X-Mode’s parent company, Digital Envoy. Previous reporting showed X-Mode, which recently rebranded as Outlogic, has also been used by various branches of the military.

While information on users from data brokers is primarily used for targeted ads, government and law enforcement agencies also purchase and use it for identification and tracking. The IRS, in particular, has come under increased scrutiny for its adoption of surveillance and high-tech solutions. Last year, members of Congress called for an inquiry into the IRS’s use of mass location data for its criminal investigation division, and the IRS recently abandoned a plan to use facial recognition to verify new accounts.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has investigated warrantless location tracking and surveillance technology used by the government, expressed concern about the use of the company.

“I’m looking into Digital Envoy’s contracts with the government and have asked for a briefing to understand how these contracts impact Americans’ privacy,” said Wyden, in a statement to The Intercept. “I strongly believe the government should not be able to use its credit card to get around the Constitution and purchase sensitive information without a warrant. That’s why I introduced the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act to close this loophole for good.”

The Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, and Digital Envoy did not provide comment after multiple requests from The Intercept.

In 2020, the IRS signed a contract with Digital Envoy for an archive database subscription to NetAcuity, a product used to “pinpoint users’ geographic location.” Last October, following its acquisition of X-Mode, Digital Envoy was contracted by the IRS enforcement division for another contract for services that extends through September of this year.

The current contract with the IRS is part of the IRS’s Identity Theft Tax Refund Fraud Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a special project that utilizes private sector data to identify tax fraud.

Homeland Security currently contracts with Digital Envoy, via the department’s science and technology wing, for $129,960, according to federal records.

Digital Envoy also contracts with the Pentagon’s logistics arm. In a statement, the Defense Logistics Agency, which coordinates the movement of troops, fuel, and other services for the military, confirmed that “DLA contracted with Digital Elements, a division of Digital Envoy, for commercial subscription services.”

X-Mode has previously contracted with the Air Force, according to public records. The company entered into an Air Force contract for $283,125 in 2019 and entered into another contract for $140,000 in 2020.

X-Mode is now an integrated part of Digital Envoy’s tools sold to clients. The company advertises a department called “Digital Element” that uses “precise, real-time geolocation data” which “compliments data from our sister company, Outlogic,” the rebranded name for X-Mode.

Last August, Digital Envoy purchased X-Mode for an undisclosed amount. The deal followed a string of controversies in the media about X-Mode’s practices. Many of the apps cataloged by The Markup may have included sensitive information about users, including the LGBTQ-friendly Bro App and buzzArab dating platform. Following the story, some of the apps, including the Bro App, discontinued sale of location data to the firm.

In a press release, Digital Envoy claimed that they instituted a code of ethics, created a data ethics review panel, and implemented a sensitive app policy. The firm announced that it has “taken additional care by shutting off all U.S. location data going to defense contractors.”

But the deal also stressed that the X-Mode, now known as Outlogic, would continue to serve government clients, claiming that collecting and selling location data “has been integral in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, the fight against human trafficking, and the optimization of emergency vehicle and evacuation routes during natural disasters, among powering many other essential social services.”

The IRS has previously tapped location data brokers. In an attempt to identify and track potential criminals, the agency purchased access to mass location data in 2017 and 2018 from Venntel, another data broker, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Other federal agencies, including the FBI, have contracted with Venntel.

Venntel, as a data broker, operates similarly to X-Mode. The company sourced precise location data from a variety of unassuming apps, including apps used for gaming and weather. That data was stored and sold to a number of clients, including government agencies.

In response, Wyden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for an internal audit of the agency’s use of the location tracking technology. “The IRS is not above the law and the agency’s lawyers should never provide IRS-CI investigators with permission to bypass the courts and engage in warrantless surveillance of Americans,” Wyden and Warren wrote to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The inspector general responded with a report that found Venntel location data was not useful for IRS investigations but asserted that the IRS’s use of location data rested on sound legal ground. The IRS lawyers claimed that “data obtained from marketers of information like Venntel is not subject to a warrant because the data is collected by apps loaded on cellphones to which the phone users voluntarily granted access.” This claim has not been tested in court.

Jack Poulson, an activist and co-founder of the watchdog group Tech Inquiry, said he is concerned that government agencies are increasingly deploying surveillance technology with little oversight.

Poulson called the government’s use of cellphone location tracking data “an abusive violation of privacy for vulnerable populations.” In previous reports, he has identified how X-Mode has transferred location data to a number of government and media clients. The change in brand and acquisition by Digital Envoy, he added, is a “corporate shell game” to “obscure these egregious practices.”

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